Ryan Cheal, COO of Inspire Brands Asia, on what the Anytime Fitness ‘tailgating incident’ taught him about empathy and trust

How They See It delves into the thinking behind leaders shaping complex, fast-scaling organisations. In this instalment, Ryan Cheal, COO of Inspire Brands Asia, reflects on what it means to steward the growth of Anytime Fitness across Asia — addressing the tensions, complaints, and trade-offs that emerge when a brand moves from expansion to infrastructure.

“I joined Anytime Fitness at a moment when scale had already stopped being abstract. By the time I took on responsibility for the region, we were no longer proving a concept — we were stewarding a system. 

The opening of our 150th club in Singapore brings that reality into sharp relief. It marks how deeply embedded the brand has become in the everyday lives of people who train before dawn, after midnight, between meetings, or around caregiving schedules that rarely respect business hours.

When Anytime Fitness entered Singapore in 2013, the ambition was deliberately modest. We wanted to demonstrate that fitness could live closer to home, that access mattered as much as aspiration, and that a gym did not need to sit in the CBD to be taken seriously. 

With the opening of the Woodlands branch, a 24-hour model felt novel. Today, with 150 Anytime Fitness clubs spread across the island, convenience has shifted from innovation to expectation. Density has changed behaviour. Members train where life happens, not where fitness is staged, and that has quietly reshaped how movement integrates into daily routines rather than competing with them.

When growth becomes infrastructure

Scale, however, forces a different kind of responsibility. Across eight markets in Asia, overseeing more than 550 gyms has taught me that standardisation only works when it knows its limits. 

We have non-negotiables — safety, cleanliness, ethical business practices, equipment standards, coaching quality, and financial integrity — because without them, trust fractures quickly. But Asia does not reward rigidity. Labour cultures, consumer expectations, and social norms vary widely, and a franchise system that mistakes uniformity for strength will eventually hollow itself out.

What we standardise are principles, not personalities. Franchise partners operate with autonomy because proximity to their communities gives them insight no central office can replicate. Our role is to provide frameworks, infrastructure, training, and accountability that allow that autonomy to flourish without drifting into negligence. 

The tension between flexibility and control never disappears; leadership sits in holding it honestly rather than pretending it can be solved once and for all. That tension surfaces most visibly in how members experience different clubs. 

Variation exists, and it should. Club culture, local programming, and community dynamics benefit from latitude. Where variation becomes unacceptable is when it touches the core promise. Cleanliness, safety, access, and member care cannot depend on postcode or personality. When those standards slip, it stops being a franchise by-product and becomes a leadership failure. 

That is why we invest heavily in support teams, compliance systems, and the willingness to intervene early, coach decisively, and act when standards are not met. 

Complaints as a leadership problem at scale

Few issues test that philosophy as sharply as cancellations and billing. The industry has earned its reputation for friction, and we do not pretend we operate in a vacuum. Our own research shows that people join gyms not for novelty, but for structure — a physical and psychological contract with themselves. 

That sense of commitment underpins retention, and it explains why Singapore remains one of our strongest markets globally for loyalty. But commitment cannot slide into coercion. When members feel trapped in administrative loops, explanations offer little comfort. Friction repeated at scale signals a structural flaw.

We have invested in integrated payment systems designed to reduce manual handling, eliminate ambiguity, and protect data privacy, while giving franchisees clear visibility over their own operations. Audits, compliance checks, and operational reviews create guardrails, but trust does not emerge from oversight alone. It comes from designing processes around how members actually behave — busy, distracted, imperfect — rather than how systems prefer them to behave. 

When patterns of delayed cancellations or unresolved disputes appear, we intervene directly, provide additional coaching, and revisit the system itself. Accountability cuts both ways.

From enforcement to trust maintenance

The Singapore tailgating incident reinforced that lesson. Access control exists for safety, and enforcement matters, but rules applied without judgement erode confidence faster than rules ignored. 

Internally, the episode forced us to confront how discretion operates on the ground. We strengthened training around proportionality, empathy, and context, making clear that policy serves trust, not the other way around. Humility matters at scale; the ability to pause, review, and course-correct keeps a brand credible when missteps occur.

Today, consumer expectations have evolved faster than many operators anticipated. Convenience once meant proximity and operating hours. Now it encompasses responsiveness, personalisation, and coherence across physical and digital touchpoints. 

Members compare gym experiences not only with other gyms, but with every service that promises frictionless interaction. Tolerance for inefficiency has narrowed, and legacy assumptions no longer hold. Recognising that shift does not weaken the model; it forces it to mature.

For me, responsible scale now means restraint as much as ambition. Growth should amplify trust, not dilute it. We will slow expansion in any market where system readiness, staff capability, or governance lags behind demand. 

Success at this stage does not register in unit counts alone, but in whether every touchpoint — from billing to safety enforcement — reflects the care implied by our size. At 150 clubs, Singapore has now become a model of ideal infrastructure. And infrastructure, once established, must be maintained with vigilance, clarity, and the willingness to evolve before trust asks us to.”